Best Buy Lcd HDTV Blog

24nication with Soyo -- one dead paxil?
I love this monitor.

I do wish it had a better stand, it has frustrated me endlessly that it does not have HDCP.

However, I solved that with a "Star" video converter/scaler. The scaler, however, was useless to me to convert YpBpR signals to VGA. S-video, composite, 480, it do, anything else, noo! Noo! I was off by one character, "C". The "Star" scaler I have works on "YCbCr", which is
some kind of digital voo dippity doo doo standard that is great for engineer's pocketbooks and frustrating for consumers. I got it for an insanely low price, half of what I had seen it for on eBay from buy.com. I do NOT like the Star scaler. I initially did, but it's a POS.

Apparently I'm not alone in this disregard, some EQUIPMENT manufacturers mislabel one for the other, though I can't be sure of that, that's what someone in a message area said. I tried to get it going in Component, and anything above the lowest setting on my cable box wouldn't work. (Boo fricking hoo! Moving back a few feet will work in s-video) I can't say I'm impressed with the converter/scaler, I don't know if it's the scaler or my cheapo unshielded cables, though the jury on that is out for lunch, but s-video through the scaler from the cable box, I can live with it until a cheaper solution comes along. Buying a "hd fury" -- which I can say I sometimes wish I would have done to view 1080p -- my Time Hotdog cable box doesn't HAVE 1080p, and this monitor does not support it. I'll wait for something more logical to come down the bitstream.

I mainly want the s-video for using with my camcorder.

I've had a Gateway FPD2185W, the bad caps in that went out after a year, right after the warranty went out, and after I had disposed of it, I saw a fix for the bad caps on the Web. I had an Acer 22", I have a Samsung TN panel downstairs that cost me as much as this one did and is 17", which has HDCP. It does 720p. I'd rather "put up" with the Soyo.
I do more Youtubing than boobtubing, anyway.

I may be ultimately an unhappy camper, Smellfeetica, I've had a lot of ho-hos and horrors with hardware. Monitors seem to be pretty touchy creatures. But I've homebuilt (Yeah. Right. Homebuilt, mail-ordered) systems, and only one did not work when I first booted it.
But one was a Gigabyte and it was fried later.

I read reports of Soyo making crappy motherboards once upon a time, but this is the best of those three monitors purely in terms of visitude, which is what I spend all my time DOING on it. Yeah, the Gateway was nice, it had all those inputs and HDCP, but not having a headache from eyestrain on the job is nice, too. Having a monitor in a year's time will be nice, if this one lasts.

I've read lots of reports of dead pixels, I have a frozen one in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. I took a black magic marker to the logos. It looks AWFUL under harsh lighting, and I don't recommend anyone do that, (also, don't take a pressure washer to your screen, as
one wise a- wise man wonked), and as soon as I find my roll of electrical tape, I'll go after the power LEDs, though I approve of the color choice. Maybe masking off the bezel and using flat-black paint hijacked from a "Krylon" Corp. freighter would have been the answer. But someone into modding their monitor like that would have the Dell 30" or whatever, and conversely, not have to mod their monitor in the farcet place.

I got the M-PVA 6 ms version. Could be happier, but not for the amount of money I paid. I was going to take this back to Wal*Wartz and trade it for an HP 24", and if they didn't have such a draconian policy on returns (as well as on humanity itself) I would have done that, and I would have HDCP, but as a MONITOR, for half of what I paid, it's a good deal. Even Amazon's price is kind of sheep, I'd stay.

Great monitor, if it worked...
I bought this monitor for 0 in October 2007. Overall, the picture quality of the LCD is very good, much better than I expected. It was sharp, brilliant, large, no dead pixels, crisp with either VGA or DVI interfaces, and overall a great value. For the price, I was a very happy customer.

HOWEVER, in September 2008, the monitor simply went dead. I was using my computer when suddenly the monitor died, and I could smell burnt circuitry from the top vent of the monitor. That's less than a single year of use, and I was "lucky" in the sense that the warranty is only for a year so I was barely able to get an RMA. But I have to pay for shipping and their tech support told me that most likely the replacement will have dead pixels. So what I thought was a great deal ended up being not such a great deal. So buyer beware!

Bought one a week ago..and returned a week later for an HP.
My son bought this for me a week ago. I trust his judgement since he's an IT engineer. I've never heard of SOYO before this but he reassured me they were good products at a very inexpensive price. I believe I have the latest model SOYO dylm24e6. The specs seem to be the same as the d6 with the exception of the the response time which is 2ms and the only difference I can see is the placement of the SOYO logo. The e6 has it in the middle of the bezel. If you don't look carefully the first time you might think it says Sony. The monitor is very user friendly, has great color for still pictures and graphics, the moving video is ok. There is one dead pixel on the upper left corner of the screen but can only be seen in scenes that have a dark background, otherwise you can't even tell it's there. I hope I get a long life out of this monitor. It does not look expensive as an HP or Samsung or other top names but the picture is outstanding.,,,until I tried some movies and text. Don't let the resolution numbers fool you. I took it back and exchanged it for an HPW2207H that is a 22in and the resolution is 1680x 1050 and the picture is way better than the SOYO. The text is sharp and it also has many more features and looks expensive. The screen can be easily lifted to any position and also turned 90 degrees for a portrait screen which is very useful for viewing documents and typing letters. It also came with an HDMI cable and also a VGA cable plus has a DVI input and two USB inputs. The screen can be set to view games, text, photos, movies, and you can change the color temp or adjust the RGB separately. None of these functions were available on the SOYO. I only paid the difference as the HP was more expensive but it was on sale. For 21 dollars more I ended up with what I wanted originally and the quality is way higher.
:)

Aside from a dead pixel or two it's good
Low price, good color, but the occasional annoying dead pixel as I was warned about in other reviews. I returned the 22" Soyo monitor because it had 5 dead pixels. The new exchange monitor is the 24" screen, and still has one dead pixel, but it's no big deal-- I've already forgotten about it-- as it's often hidden by icons on my desktop. I called Soyo to discuss. They answered the phone quickly and the tech support person was helpful and hopefully correct when he said that dead pixels do not hamper overall performance and do not affect life span of the monitor. The controls are a bit wacky in that the manual says the brightness control is next to the contrast, but it is not. (You have to go to Miscellaneous category to find the brightness.) I'm using the monitor on an Intel iMac and it works well in both the Mac and PC environments. I'm keeping this one.

Good monitor for the price
This is a large, widescreen monitor that has worked well for me. Other users have reported bad pixels and other problems. I have been using mine heavily on a daily basis for almost a year now without any difficulty.

The monitor does get rather hot - the heat can be felt radiating from the screen surface when one holds a hand close to it. There is also a slight flicker, which is hardly noticeable. Be aware that this monitor is cheaply manufactured. However, I am quite happy with it.

I have also had problems with the monitor reporting the wrong supported resolutions and refresh rates. This resulted in Windows only allowing up to 1600x1200 (Vista x64, nVidia GeForce 8400M GS), and fullscreen games failing with "signal out of range". If anyone else has these problems, they can be solved with a custom monitor.inf; I have written one and made it freely available here:
http://nitoprograms.blogspot.com/2008/07/soyo-widescreen-monitor-inf-available.html

I regularly use this monitor for both work (programming) and movies:
1) Work - the 1920x1200 screen resolution is excellent for multitasking.
2) Movies - this monitor looks good from different angles, and the speakers work fine (though they're not terribly loud).

Overall, a decent product at an excellent price.

Good Value, Bad Color
I purchased this display recently to pair with another 22" LCD that I own (Acer AL2216W), and found it extremely frustrating to attempt to color rectify them.

I found some monitor calibration tools online to attempt to adjust the display to accurately display both black levels and color saturation, and after hours of fiddling, found myself at only a marginally better position than starting. To qualify, this is not my first time around the block with these kind of tools; my primary display is almost 100% calibrated with the given tools. So, for this display to still seem rather washed out after hours of calibration...I find to be quite frustrating.

I would gladly pay the I saved purchasing this monitor to get the paired AL2216W, as I feel it to be a better quality monitor in most every way. And for Acer to be somewhat criticized in the industry for manufacturing somewhat low quality monitors, that's not saying a lot.

In short, pay the extra -30 for a better quality monitor (Acer or other), and save yourself the headache of attempting to get this cheapo working correctly.

Real big, very inexpensive and no major complaints
I needed a monitor, picked this one mainly based on price, and am very happy with it.

The screen is huge. This replaced 20" LCD, and feels much bigger than just a 2" addition.

The stats are impressive, and the performance seems to match claims. I don't play high end games on it, but everything that has been on the monitor has looked great.

My monitor has one burnt pixel. It's in the lower right corner....half an inch up and 3 inches form the side, an excellent place for a burnt pixel and very acceptable. I've seen much worse on far more expensive monitors.

Complaints? The only one is that the blue light below the screen, which is there to tell you the monitor is turned on, is too bright. I don't even know why it's there to begin with.....isn't the picture on the screen a good enough sign? This a minor issue overall, and this light is on every LCD monitor you buy. It is fixed with a piece of black electric tape.

What a buy!
I bought this for my sister as a change over TV to digital. She absolutely loves it. It's clear and bright. She has always had trouble reading the words on the bottom of some programs but can easily read them now on this TV.

Thanks again. Excellent product!

Solid all around
This a rare find...there aren't too many manufacturers making a 32" Plasma. With that said, this was the cheapest price I could find on this size plasma. But the TV was not cheaply made. The price does not reflect the craftsmanship of the TV. It has a very sturdy frame and the picture is very smooth and the colors are very deep. And XBOX 360 looks awesome on this tv. If you dont want to spend 0+ on a name *Samsung*, you should consider this SOYO. It's worth much more than the price tag its given.

Better than Sony
Four months ago, we bought the Sony KDL52WL140 from Sams club. Three weeks ago we replaced it with the Samsung LN52A850. What a difference! (but, give Sams club a "thumbs up" because they took the Sony back for a full refund - no problems at all)

The Samsung has more dynamic color than the Sony and the color stays true from wider viewing angles. I know some people complain about the internal speakers on the Samsung but I cannot speak to that issue as we never use the TV speakers anyway. The Samsung is much cooler (as in creates less heat) than the Sony. The Sony was way too hot (even when the brightness and backlighting were set to low levels.)

The Samsung is thinner than the Sony and also has a USB port for playing videos and such from thumb drives, etc.

We could not be happier with the Samsung. Also, the deliver process was fast, smooth, and FREE! Gotta give this puppy 5 stars!

Great TV - "right out of the box"
Samsung LN52A650 52-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with Red Touch of Color The price was excellent, the delivery was exactly as promised (gently carried from truck to home, set up where I wanted, wires connected, box taken away if requested) and the unit has performed just as good as when I saw it in the electronics store near my home, just that with no shipping and tax I saved close to 0.00. Vivid colors, no motion blur and the swivel feature on the base comes in handy too! I feel this was a most excellent choice for both quality and price.

Clouding issue on the 52" 850
The TV was fine for a couple of days but then yesterday night, I started noticing patches of light on various parts of the display that looked like 'clouds'. It was very noticeable in low-light situations which unfortunately I am in most of the time when watching tv. In the day-time, this issue is less noticeable. I've since contacted both Amazon and Samsung to try to resolve this problem and Samsung is going to send a tech out to take a look at the set to see if they can fix the issue first. It seems like this issue is more of a problem on the 650/750 series from what I researched and this is the reason why I opted to spend more money for the 850 but it's disappointing to have to go through the hassle of either getting this fixed or trying to return the tv, all within a narrow time period. Check CNET-Samsung forums for other users that have the clouding issue.

Happy in Florida
This product (Samsung LN52A850 52-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color) has performed well. I was really happy with the service from Amazon.

Beautiful, Amazing, WOW!!!
This set is amazing. I had a 61" rear projection that had a good picture, but It wasn't anywhere near as good as this. The picture quality is incredible. When scenes involve people in a room for instance it's like looking in on them through a window every detail is bright, vivid, and crisp. And that is with stand definition. I record some old black & White shows and they have never looked so good. High definition is nothing short of spectacular. This set can be set to deliver a 60 hrtz or 120 hrtz refresh. The 60 is very good, but the 120 takes it to the next level. The higher refresh rate gives near Blue Ray quality to scenes where there is distant details in the background. These details become visible with the higher refresh rate. I'm seeing absolutely no artifacts in the picture at all.
The viewing angles are where I see a big difference from what I'm used to. The picture quality shows little or no change no matter how far to the side you get. I've laid on the floor directly below the set and the picture is great, and even when I stand right next to it and look down on it the picture is still great.
There are plenty of inputs, including 4 hdmi ports. All these different input ports are accessible using the remote. The remote has all the usual features, but it also includes a click wheel that I have found to work well. Clicking the center of the click wheel brings up a menu of the many features on this TV.I won;t bother listing them here, there's a great list on the site. Once the list comes up you can scroll and click through the many features to use them or turn them off.
The screen is only 2 inches thick, and the whole set doesn't weigh very much at all. You do see some glare on the screen mostly during the day. The screen can be pivoted thought an that helps a lot. The base is very stable. I have the set sitting on a sturdy but narrow table and because most of the weight of the set is in the base the TV sits nicely and isn't tippy at all.
I checked this set out at show room with many LCD's and plasma's on display and this set had what I say is the best picture by far. Even in a large room with a lot of light.
I recommend this TV without the slightest hesitation.

Very Satisfied Panasonic purchaser!
I researched HDTV's for over a year and after after careful consideration, I chose the 58" Panasonic Viera Plasma. I've had it for two weeks now and am very very happy with the set (and relieved). A relative has the 60" Pioneer Elite Kuro and paid 00 for it. I can honestly say that my Panasonic is really close in picture quality to the Pioneer at more than half the price.
The set up is easy, sound is good and the picture quality is super.

This TV is very crisp and beautiful
I got this TV b/c cnet seemed to rave about it. I had a TH-50PX600U and that was a nice TV and I'm a big panasonic fan, but this TV I can definitely notice an improvement in quality from my cable HD channels, even though both are from the same 720p signal. In addition, watching Blu-Ray from this is beautiful (I'm using a PS3). I'm really happy with the purchase. One recommendation for anyone owning this TV is to use custom settings and not use the settings that are default.


The rest of the review is copy/pasted from "daarrid" over at avsforum.com
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1056962

However lets remember that the THX mode can be adjusted!!!! Panasonic's default settings for THX are just wrong. The CNET reviewer, using a completely dark room, adjusted the THX settings considerably upward from their default settings. Just for the sake of example - CNET increased the picture setting from 50 to 100 for their review.

I'd suggest that anyone owning this set start with CNET's THX settings:

CNET's THX settings (completely dark room):

Picture: 100
Brightness: 55
Color: 56
Tint: 0
Sharpness: 50
Color Temp: Warm
Cats: Off
Color Man.: Off
MPEG NR: Off
HD Size: Size 2
Black Level: Light


Or try My THX Settings (for a dimly lite room):

THX MODE:

Picture: 95
Brightness: 62
Color: 50
Tint: -8
Sharpness: 50
Color Temp: Normal
Cats: Off
Color Man.: On
MPEG NR: Off
HD Size: Size 2
Black Level: Light

While I use my Custom settings occassionally - tweaking the THX settings are much more important for everyday use. I use THX 90% of the time. The Custom Mode I created, I generally use ONLY for broadcasts made for TV. Remember THX is a movie standard and does not technically apply to TV shows (although some of these TV shows may also look better in THX).

Here are my custom mode settings again (already posted). Use these settings for TV shows and/or movies shown in a bright room:

CUSTOM MODE:

Picture: 85
Brightness: 50
Color: 34
Tint: -7
Sharpness: 50
Color Temp: Normal
Cats: Off
Color Man.: On
MPEG NR: Off
HD Size: Size 2
Black Level: Light

Shock & Awe
Look at the picture & forget about the price, other reviews mentioned how much this TV cost, I will not. Why? Because, when your focus is to get the best TV out there the price should comes second. To me, this is the one. I watch this TV from about 13 feet away and have a direct TV DVR receiver connected by monster 1000 HDMI cable. Wow!
Here is a double Wow! Get the Panasonic Blue-ray Disc player DMP-BD30 will do and connect it to this TV set by HDMI connection, get the "planet earth" Blue-ray CD and you will experience audio/video Shock & Awe.
I am not bias to Panasonic, in fact the only Panasonic I ever purchased in my life was a panasonic wireless telephone, 6 years old and still going... So I figured the TV would be as durable, so far so good.
Hey, if price is the issue, an average person will keep a good TV set 5 to 7 years. Now divide the cost by the amount of years you think you will keep this TV. Got it?
Au revoir mes amis, I am going to watch TV

Panasonic Viera TH-58PZ800U is AMAZING!!!
I recently purchased the panasonic th58pz800u from amazon for 19, which I feel is very reasonable (The price has indeed fluctuated between 99 and 99 on amazon during the time I was shopping for it). Once ordered, the television was delivered in 3 business days (I'm in CA). Although the amazon website said it would be delivered "white glove", the delivery persons did not have that information. However, when we let them know that's what we were expecting, they willingly obliged by unpacking the t.v., placing it on it's stand, turned it on and left with all the packing materials. Pretty nice! Before purchasing this t.v. which I waited for a while before it was even available, I was considering the Pioneer pdp6020fd, which in my mind is the only other comparable plasma set, image quality and features wise. I opted for a plasma because I felt that it had the superior picture (contrast, colors, sharpness) over all the nicer lcd screens available (120hz sony xbr, samsung, toshiba) particularly when viewing lots of full-range motion (sports and movies), the panasonic and pioneer plasmas handled the edging the most smoothly. I found the Panasonic set to be very close in image quality with the pioneer but for 00-00 less. I didn't care for the samsung sets because they generated so much heat. The panasonic and pioneer sets both don't noticeably change the temperature of a room.

I setup my panasonic with all my sources being piped through my Denon avr2808ci, which upconverts all sources through it's hdmi out. I have a hd cable box (connected via hdmi), a dvd player (connected via component) and a sony ps3 (connected via hdmi) hooked-up through the denon. The 1080i from the hd cable box looks amazing! The 1080p from the ps3 bluray is flawless and the 480p upconverted from dvd looks surprisingly great as well. In each case, the colors are vibrant and the blacks are so black that the blacks in an image are consistent with the black of the screen when it is turned-off. All in all, I am extremely pleased with my purchase of the panasonic and find it to be the finest television I have owned (The t.v. I replaced was a hd-capable 57" sony xbr rear projection whose blacks were actually dark gray...I bought this t.v. for 00 more than the panasonic set 7 years ago).

In my particular setup, I had to make sure that all my hdmi cables were hdmi v1.3 cables otherwise the denon throughput no signal to the television. Monoprice.com had excellent hdmi v1.3 cables for about each. I was able to get a great bdi stand for it from dynamichomedecor.com which I also found to be an excellent resource.

I highly recommend the purchase from amazon.com primarily because of the included "white glove" delivery, just make sure at the time of purchase that it is stated. I know that vanns.com and other reputable places may have slightly lower prices, but for me the "white glove" delivery really made the whole process much easier and sweeter.

Don't assume anything, ask if you're not sure!!!
Two months ago I bought a 52" LCD TV (not Panasonic) for my family room, so my grand kids could watch TV and play Xbox & Playstation 3 games. The TV was bought directly from Amazon and the shipping was free. When it got to my house over three weeks later, two men deliverd the TV and put it in my family room. They took it out of the box and set it up and pluged it in to make sure everything worked. (It did) They said the white glove service was on all TV's from Amazon. On 08/29/2008 I went to Amazon's web sight and bought my TH-58PZ800U (61.99) for my living room and the shipping was free too. My 58" Panasonic TV was actually bought from a partner company through Amazon, called Buy Now Inc., which still honored the free shipping. When the TV was delivered 09/11/2008 (in very good condition), it was only delivered by one man and it was a side walk delivery only. He saw I was disabled and was nice enough to bring it in through my front door and left it in my living room. I unpacked it and set it up two days later. The TV (140 lbs) comes with a stand and it's very easy to set up but you will need at least two healthy people and three is even better. I called Amazon and asked why the difference in my type of delivery? They said, All TV items bought directly from Amazon get the white glove type delivery treatment and from partner companies in most cases it will be a side walk delivery only. Both times the trucking company called a day or two ahead, to set up the delivery I strongly recommed you ask what type of delivery you're getting. I hope this helps?

Now about the TH-58PZ800U Panasonic Plasma TV which I researched for over a month before I bought it. I read all the personal and profesional reviews I could find. I was very lucky to have a major National Electronics store in my area that had a large selection of most of the major brands that made Plasma TV's. I want to be very honest in this review. Three or four other brands of Plasma TV's have come a long way and they looked great. I tried to compare apples to apples by comparing only Plasma TV's because that's what I wanted for my living room. It was very hard to see a major difference in picture and color in alot of todays Plasma TV's on display. I narrowed it down to two or three Plasma TV's in the 58" to 60" range. What made the decision for me was: My 58" Panasonic had a very good picture, colors were excellent, the non glare screen, all the HDMI (4) and other inputs, Panasonics Reputation, Quality and Repair history. I already own a 42" Panasonic Plasma TV that is 5 years old and it still has a great picture. Last but not least, the sound from the TV speakers is great if you don't have a home sound system, which I do, so I checked it out and then I hooked it up to my ow home sound system. The remote control is easy to use and the menu, doing the TV set up, is very easy and quick to do. Right now I have no negatives because I've only had the TV for 5 days and used it for 3 days. I hope this review has helped in some ways.

It is great to use.
This projector's quality is excellent and it is very easy to use. I highly recommend it for use with small groups and to groups of over 100. The visual image is very clear in large and small rooms.

Love it!
This projector is smaller than I expected and really displays great pictures, even on dark walls. Love the wireless and PC less capability. Very impressed so far.

More than meets the eye
When I purchased it, I was impressed by the ability to project shows without a PC attached. But in practice it seemed there were more options than I had realized. I tried out the 802.11g wireless connection to a laptop. It worked fine for slides, but was unacceptably jerky for video (MPEG2 and DVD's) although this may have been due to the older laptop I used. I did not try out the multiple laptop connection feature but presume it works the same. I also showed my presentation without a PC. This process requires you to install their software, and then to convert your PowerPoint .ppt show to the Epson-recognizable format. Place the resultant files on your USB thumb drive which plugs into the projector and off you go. Worked perfectly on simple presentations, but didn't sequence some of my fly-in labels properly. (They all three flew in at once.) So if you have a more complex presentation, I'd be prepared for surprises. It showed a folder of (non-PowerPoint) JPEG images without a hitch. Advancing them with the remote was intuitive. But "PC-Free" projection of mpeg files was hit-and-miss. One worked fine, one didn't project at all. Other features (auto-keystone correction etc.) all worked as expected. I like the product, but I'm not depending on it for video.